Belize National Basketball Team begins quest for FIBA Americup on 10th July
The Belize Basketball Federation is excited to announce that the Belize Men’s National Basketball Team will begin play in the first round of the Central American qualifiers for the FIBA Americup tournament.
FIBA’s new competition format will see us play in home and away series against our Central American rivals for a chance to advance to the next round of play against countries from other regions in the Americas hemisphere.
A tournament draw was held in December, 2017 and the following groupings were established:
Group A: Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala
Group B: Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua
*Panama has already qualified for the FIBA World Cup 2019 tournament.
Teams will play games in their grouping and the top teams from each group will then play each other for the spot to advance from the Central American region.
Our first game will be a home game at the Belize Civic Center against none other than Guatemala on 10th July. Team Belize then travels to play in El Salvador and Guatemala and then returns to Belize to host our final home game against El Salvador on 22nd July. Game times will be advised once they are finalized.
Picture above shows the players on the team that played in the Central American games in December
After a bronze medal performance in the recent Central American Games in December last year, we have high expectations of our Men’s Basketball National Team under the coaching leadership of National Team Head Coach Milt Palacio. We anticipate that he will put together a strong team which will make a deep run into the FIBA Americup tournament. This is an important tournament which gives us a route for possible selection in FIBA’s Olympic qualifying tournaments in 2020 to participate in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
The opening of tryouts and training camp will be announced shortly.
Mark the dates in your calendars. We are counting on the support of all Belizeans as we embark on this exciting journey.